Evangelical churches such as suburban Willow Creek will close on Christmas so members can focus on family

December 06, 2005|By Manya A. Brachear, Tribune staff reporter

Willow Creek Community Church, one of the largest churches in the Chicago area, will be closed on Sunday, Dec. 25--because it's Christmas.

Although thousands of the faithful usually flock to the South Barrington church and its satellites on Sundays, Willow Creek is joining several other evangelical megachurches across the nation in choosing not to worship as a congregation on Christmas Day.

Instead, they will urge members to focus on family at home, rather than filling the pews.

"At first glance it does sound contrarian," said Rev. Gene Appel, senior pastor of Willow Creek. "We don't see it as not having church on Christmas. We see it as decentralizing the church on Christmas--hundreds of thousands of experiences going on around Christmas trees. The best way to honor the birth of Jesus is for families to have a more personal experience on that day."

It's not that the church does not value Christmas, the day set aside to commemorate the incarnation of God on Earth. Willow Creek is organizing almost a week of worship ending Christmas Eve, and total attendance at the services is expected to top 50,000. The church has also produced a short DVD designed to reinforce the theme of the Christmas services and help viewers process spiritual questions that may cross their minds during the holidays.

And Appel argues that family has always been at the heart of the Christmas story: the tale of a mother and father celebrating the birth of a babe in a manger.

But some religious scholars say letting people decide what is convenient for them on one of the holiest days on the Christian calendar is an example of American evangelical Christians' concessions run amok.

"This speaks to the dilapidated state of evangelical faith today," said David Wells, a professor of theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Boston. "That we would think that going to church is getting in the way of celebrating Christmas--that the family celebration shouldn't be impeded by having to go to church--it seems to me that our priorities are upside down."

Several other large evangelical churches in the U.S. have canceled Christmas Day services this year, including Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Mich., and Fellowship Church near Dallas.

A spokeswoman for Willow Creek said the church has never held services on Christmas Day, except for one late-morning service on Dec. 25, 1994, the last time the holiday fell on a Sunday. About 1,500 people attended, said Cally Parkinson.

The resources that would have funded the church's Sunday service this year will go toward the DVD instead, potentially touching thousands more people than the same message from the stage on Sunday morning, Parkinson said.

"[The Christmas season] is our Super Bowl," she said. "Remembering our mission is to reach people who are far from God, and Christmas tends to be the one time of year when lots of those `unchurched' people show up at Willow; why not give them a gift?"

Parkinson said only two people have contacted the church to question the absence of services on the calendar for Dec. 25.

Calvin College historian James Bratt said the idea of focusing on family at Christmas reflects a 19th Century Victorian concept called "religion of the home" that promotes home and hearth as a sanctuary for family values and refuge from the industrial world's evils.

"It's a sign of how totally identified with the culture [evangelicals have] become," Bratt said. "The church has subordinated to cultural icons, and family is one of them. ... The logic of that is you should celebrate the holiday in its true sanctuary, which is the home."

The history of the Christmas celebration dates to the days of the Holy Roman Empire, when the church celebrated Christ's birthday opposite the pagan celebration of the sun god.

In the 16th Century, leaders of the Protestant Reformation seeking to cleanse Christianity of its pagan influences and return to its biblical foundations banned Christmas, which was created long after the New Testament. By the late 17th Century, the Yuletide celebration was virtually nonexistent both in England and its colonies overseas.

But by the mid-19th Century, laws had overturned the Puritan bans on Christmas, and stockings, trees, holly and mistletoe became part of American iconography. Ever since, many Protestants have gone back and forth on where Christmas primarily belongs--in the church or the home.

In the Roman Catholic Church, it's hard to imagine canceling masses on Christmas, said Todd Williamson, director of the office of divine worship for the Archdiocese of Chicago. Many parishes, in fact, will be adding services on Sunday the 25th.

"I think the majority of Catholics would miss it," he said. "I don't think we're at that point where it's a major inconvenience, whether it's midnight or not. Christmas mass is just part of people's observance of the day."